The Laws of the Ring by Tim Keown, Urijah Faber Read Free Book Online Page A

seemingly innocuous stuff like the fact that he wouldn’t check out girls like he used to—which to me was alarming—now he was getting up at four-thirty every morning to read his Bible.
    Ryan doesn’t do anything halfway, and we knew that he had become a member of the International Church of Christ (Boston Movement). It wasn’t until later that we found out this Church of Christ is one of the fastest-growing and most destructive cults in America. Time magazine did a story on them, as did television information programs such as A Current Affair, a popular news show at that time. This group recruits almost exclusively on college campuses, and it uses young, good-looking people to do the recruiting. They target people like Ryan who are idealistic and away from home for the first time.
    There is a big emphasis on fun activities, but the real push is to increase your monetary and time commitment to the church. In addition to the financial requests, each member was assigned to a group of peers with a “discipler,” a person in charge, to keep him in line on his commitment to the International Church of Christ’s interpretation of the Bible. He was expected to report to this person regarding every aspect and decision in his life. They twisted scriptures to encourage eating less, sleeping less, and giving more money to the church, even if you didn’t have it—they didn’t care if you were a young college student trying to make ends meet. Guilt was a major tool in the church’s arsenal to control its members, so they went to great lengths to get members to tell anything and everything about their current self and their past and exaggerated “the sinfulness” of what they were coerced into sharing. Kip McKean, the leader of the group, saw to it that his disciplers were collecting everyone’s money while (we are told) he and his family were living a lavish lifestyle in Malibu, apparently thanks to the devotion of his followers.
    I had only just completed my sophomore year in high school when Ryan was first involved, and as time went on I began to see him getting more and more wrapped up in this church. I remember, during my junior year, questioning Ryan’s thought process when he was home for Christmas. He had been praying for me to find a relationship with the Lord, which I guess I could understand, but he also told me he had been including our grandparents in his prayers. Our grandparents were immigrants from Holland and were about as devoted Christians as can be. They were part of the resistance during World War II and hid Jewish families in their home, which nearly cost them their lives, but helped save the lives of those families. My grandfather, Gerard Faber, was a music professor at Asbury Christian College in Kentucky, as well as the organist at his church. My grandmother, Gerry Faber, had her own seat reserved in the front row at church, and I’ve yet to receive a holiday, birthday card, or a phone call from them without a biblical quote or religious inspiration at the end.
    Needless to say, the alarms went off when Ryan was extremely worried that my grandparents were going to hell because they weren’t following the Bible the right way, like his church. I remember laughing hard at Ryan and saying, “Dude, are you being serious?” It was apparent that he was, even after I used my best logic and sarcasm to paint a picture of how crazy he was being. The conversation ended with Ryan frustrated, a little stumped, but holding on to his faith as he believed it was the only truth.
    A few months later he took my entire family to one of his church’s group baptisms in Sacramento, which was being held in a banquet room at the Hilton. Ryan didn’t know anyone at the church (his group was in LA, the LAICC) but you couldn’t tell. He walked in and, as a member of the church, was greeted like a family member. A man got up on the stage and began